Obama asking Iran to return captured US drone aircraft

TEHRAN, IRANÂ â€” Iranian experts are in the final stages of recovering data from the U.S. surveillance drone captured by the country’s armed forces, state TV reported Monday.

Tehran has flaunted the capture of the RQ-170 Sentinel, a top-secret aircraft with stealth technology, as a victory for Iran and a defeat for the United States in a complicated intelligence and technological battle.

President Barack Obama said Monday that the U.S. was pressing Iran to return the aircraft, which U.S. officials say malfunctioned and was not brought down by Iran. But a senior commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard said on Sunday that the country would not send it back, adding that “no one returns the symbol of aggression.”

Iranian lawmaker Parviz Sorouri, a member of the parliament’s national security and foreign policy committee, said Monday the extracted information will be used to file a lawsuit against the United States for what he called the “invasion” by the unmanned aircraft.